# What is a digital garden? tags: #thoughts Maggie Appleton is probably the most central expert on [the history of the `digital garden`](https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history). She summarizes it thus: > A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren't strictly organised by their publication date. They're inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren't refined or complete - notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They're less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we're used to seeing. I would probably be a little more cynical in my presentation and suggest that at core – it's a [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Wikipedia). You know what wiki is. You have broad experience of what wikis are. In application, it's more like a blog with branches coming off of it, links which go in every direction, ideas which don't hesitate to go wandering because they are secure in the knowledge that the reader will have breadcrumbs enough to end up wherever they please. It's a bold paradigm even though it's not a new one.